Category: Online Brokers

News: Questrade and QTrade changes afoot

RobH1 Comment

I have financial relationships with 4 different brokers, soon to be reducing to 2, if things go according to plan:

  • My long-term relationship with QTrade will come to an end by the end of the year as I move the last of my RRIF accounts out1
  • Questrade holds the vast majority of my retirement savings; they will inherit most of my remaining QTrade holdings this year2
  • Wealthsimple holds a small percentage of my retirement holdings, normally because I’ve been chasing a particularly attractive promotion (free money, or last year, a free MacBook Air)
  • My mother’s estate is held by BMO Investorline and if all goes according to plan (CRA willing), I’ll be done with them early next year as the estate wraps up.

I mention all this because I sometimes get wind of new developments from these providers in near-real-time, if they chose to share those developments with their existing clients. You benefit by hearing about them at the same time I do.

QTrade joins the realm of commission-free brokers

Starting October 28th, QTrade is eliminating trading fees on ALL stocks and ETFs, bringing them in line with Questrade, Wealthsimple, Desjardins, and National Bank. This, combined with their reasonably generous cash back offer3 that runs until the end of the year, makes them a serious contender for your investing dollars. Read more at https://www.qtrade.ca/en/investor/campaign/cashbackoffer.html.

Questrade to ditch Passiv in favour of home-grown tool

One of the things I like about Questrade is their support for Passiv, which I covered here. The main thing I like about Passiv is the integrated dashboard that can span both mine and my spouse’s accounts, especially since Questrade’s native support of Authorized Traders is absolutely abysmal.

This week I received an email from Questrade with subject line “Your Passiv integration will be changing soon”.

Uh-oh.

Anyway, in what I suppose is an effort to make their product “stickier”, Questrade appears to be working on their own Passiv-like “Portfolio Monitoring and Rebalancing Tools”, which are supposed to launch “in 2026”. As a result, the current annual access to Passiv Elite will end at the end of the current renewal date, or on January 30, 2026, whichever is later.

Passiv Elite4 is the tier of Passiv that can do rebalancing trades on your behalf. It’s not a feature I really cared about since Passiv doesn’t model all-in-one ETFs the way I think about them. You might say Passiv is an alternative way of getting the benefits of all-in-one ETFs without actually holding them.

Passiv Elite is $99/year, (which is a bargain compared to the cost of all-in-ones), so I’d expect Questrade’s own tools to be bundled into some tier of their current Questrade Plus offering.

No action required at this juncture, but I’m very curious as to how Questrade’s intended offer will work…and what it will cost.

  1. As mentioned elsewhere, it was mostly because I decided to chase some free money being offered by Questrade at the time. ā†©ļøŽ
  2. I would have moved everything back in March, but I hit a snag concerning how RRIFs work. In essence, there’s no support offered for changing RRIF providers mid-year. Once the RRIF calculation has been done for the calendar year, your current broker is obligated to pay out the RRIF minimum. If you decide to move RRIF providers mid-year, the current RRIF provider still has to pay you your RRIF minimum for the entire year before allowing the transfer. Read about it here: https://moneyengineer.ca/2025/03/27/cautionary-tale-changing-brokers-when-you-have-a-rrif/ ā†©ļøŽ
  3. Up to $2000 available for the taking ā†©ļøŽ
  4. I think this is what I have, currently. I became a Questrade client just before the launch of Questrade Plus and probably got access to the “full” Passiv experience for the current year (March 2026 to be exact) by virtue of the assets Questrade has under their management from me aka “Questrade Elite”. ā†©ļøŽ

New Wealthsimple Developments

RobHLeave a comment

Wealthsimple is a broker who holds some of my retirement assets1. They had a “For Nerds Only” (recording here) event on October 22 where they announced a bunch of new features. The most exciting development for me was the pending availability of Norbert’s Gambit. Here’s my take.

$0 Options

Of no personal interest to me as I don’t trade them. There are an increasing number of ETF products that use “Covered Call” strategies in an effort to eke some (or more) yield out of held equities, but I don’t bother with products like that2. I like my investments simple.

Trade Gold; Crypto trading fees reduced

I lump these two together since I have the same amount of interest in both of these developments: none. Although people have made huge profits on gold and crypto, I’d rather make money off of companies that make things or provide services.

Direct Indexing

An interesting product that allows you to buy into the entire index3 (TSX all-cap4 or S&P 5005) and hold individual stocks. The main benefit of this is automated tax-loss harvesting which should reduce your tax bill in a non-registered account. The idea is logical, but it will come down to how well it is executed — how closely will Direct Indexing actually track the underlying index, and how much tax savings can be realized? The benefit will have to be more than the 0.5% MER being charged for investing in the index this way. Of possible interest in a non-registered account, but not otherwise. I’m not actively adding to my non-registered investments, so I don’t think this is for me either, although I’ve often wondered about how many stocks you actually have to hold in order to get “close enough” to the performance of the TSX 60 / S&P 500.

Dedicated Wealth Management

Sounds like an offer ripped from the pages of CIBC, BMO, or RBC. Dedicated advisors, tailored advice. Wealthsimple’s differentiator appears to be in the fee structure. From https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/advice:

Our fees start at 0.75% and drop to 0.4% for clients who have $10M or more with us.

https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/advice FAQ

I am not a fan of percentage-of-net-worth-based wealth management. It implies that larger portfolios are more complex. Anyway, this might be the kind of offer future, less-capable-me might be interested in, but at the moment, no thanks.

“Coming Soon”

The other features announced on the event are not available yet. But here’s a view all the same:

  • Summit Portfolio: sounds like a robo-advisor that also includes private equity. Since I like my investments to be liquid, this is another development that doesn’t really interest me.
  • Retirement Accelerator: cheap loans to help you with RRSP contributions. Leveraged investing doesn’t fit my risk profile, and, oh, by the way, I’m already retired šŸ™‚
  • Norbert’s Gambit: This is something I use all the time given that i have a large amount of USD holdings in my retirement portfolio. The best thing about the Wealthsimple webinar is that they actually trotted out Norbert6 himself to talk about it! This is one feature missing from the Wealthsimple portfolio that was a “must have” for me given my current holdings.
  • AI Trading Features, Advanced Options Strategies: Yawn.

Wealthsimple continues to be a broker I like to watch as they keep the new features rolling out. They are still not a serious contender to be my #1 broker until they support self-directed spousal RRIFs, something they inexplicably still lack.

  1. Mostly because of the DPSP debacle and the fact I needed a new Macbook. ā†©ļøŽ
  2. You can read a bit more here: https://www.proshares.com/browse-all-insights/insights/covered-call-etfs-the-myth-of-downside-protection ā†©ļøŽ
  3. On the webcast, it sounded more like they held “a representative sample” of these indices, which makes sense to me; you couldn’t hold ALL the members of the index AND do tax-loss harvesting at the same time. Their FAQ at https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/portfolios/direct-indexing confirms this. ā†©ļøŽ
  4. VCN is an ETF that holds the same index, as far as I can tell. ā†©ļøŽ
  5. VFV is an ETF that holds the same index priced in CAD. IVV is the same index priced in USD. I presume the Wealthsimple product is traded in USD, but they don’t explicitly say. ā†©ļøŽ
  6. Ā Norbert Schlenker, to be precise. ā†©ļøŽ

Online brokerage promos: when does the gravy train end?

RobH5 Comments

Online brokers are busily throwing money around to attract new customers; a quick search reveals many active promotions as I write this from Webull Canada, RBC, TD, QTrade, Wealthsimple….All of it has a bit of “if this seems too good to be true, it probably is” flavour to it.

I asked this same question on Reddit and the consensus seemed to be that this is the new normal in the online brokerage world, just like it’s normal for telcos/cablecos/ISPs to throw around big discounts in order to steal customers from one another.

But yet, I feel a little uneasy how money for nothing has become the norm. For DIY investors like me, it’s hard to see how my providers make any money off of me. I did a bit of research into the best proxy I could think of…Robinhood.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Robinhood is now part of the S&P 500 lineup; this is no fly-by-night company. Their quarterly results are public, and it was quite illuminating. Robinhood’s most recent quarter’s results are shown below.

Robinhood revenue sources: Source Robinhood Q2 2025 Earnings Presentation

So it looks pretty straightforward; revenue is coming from three sources, and their average revenue per user (ARPU) is a pretty healthy $151 dollars. Let’s look a bit further:

  • Transactions: Options trading and Crypto trading make up the bulk of the revenues here, but roughly 15% of their transaction revenue comes from basic equity trades ($66M in Q2’25).
  • Interest: a large chunk of this is interest made from margin ($114M in Q2’25), but a growing percentage comes from credit card interest charges.
  • “Other”: not elaborated further, but it’s small, so we can ignore it. Perhaps this accounts for the revenue from their 3.5M “Robinhood Gold” subscribers1

The transaction revenue was surprising to me since equity trades are free on Robinhood, yet they are still finding a way to make money. Further reading indicates that the exchanges are sharing some of their bid/ask spread revenue with Robinhood, which seems like a win/win/win: Robinhood makes a tiny bit of revenue on each trade, the exchange gets more volume which allows them to make more spread revenue, and the customer gets free trades2.

Robinhood transaction revenue: Source Robinhood Q2 2025 Earnings Presentation

So, assuming the Wealthsimples and Questrades of the world are following Robinhood’s lead, they are making money off of me every time I place a trade. (Sorry, I don’t trade options, I don’t trade crypto, I don’t trade on margin, and I don’t run a balance on any credit card I use). Since switching to Questrade (and getting free trades) I can tell you that my own behaviour has changed; I have always hated seeing non-productive cash in any of my accounts, and so with free trades, I can freely buy one share of something to clean up the last dribs of cash I may have in any given account. My “getting paid in retirement” strategy also requires a monthly flurry of trades (see the details here).

All this to say I feel less uneasy about the free money being thrown around; Canada’s online brokerage community seems to be following a successful playbook:

  • Get lots of customers, even if you have to pay them to get on board
  • Expand your offers, especially profitable offers, and entice as many of your army of fans to use them (crypto, margin trading, options trading, credit cards, subscription offers)
  • Invest just enough in your platform to not lose too many clients; switching online providers can take a lot of work (I know, I did it: read more here)

So my advice is to absolutely take advantage of the free money out there and enjoy the gravy!

  1. Perhaps serving as the inspiration for Questrade Plus? ā†©ļøŽ
  2. Not everyone thinks this is a great idea ā†©ļøŽ

Passiv guide to investing

RobHLeave a comment

Passiv is a tool I was introduced to via my online broker of choice, Questrade1. As I mentioned elsewhere, Passiv’s main mission is offer an alternative to all-in-one ETF funds by automating trades to make sure your individual holdings support your overall target.

Anyway, Passiv is a nice add-on for me because it’s a way better way for me to see accounts for which my spouse has given me trading authority (it’s a real weakness of the Questrade platform). On one screen, I can see all the accounts in the retirement portfolio.

Anyway, since I use Passiv, I get the occasional email from them. Recently, they posted a blog called The Beginner’s Guide to Passive Investing which I think is a pretty good summary of my own approach to investing; it’s a pretty good article to share with a new investor, too. There’s lots we agree on:

  • Saving is different from investing (my view here)
  • Passive investing is the way to go (I own no individual stocks in my retirement portfolio)
  • You don’t need an advisor. We disagree on why. For me, it’s because there’s all-in-one ETFs. For Passiv, it’s because there’s Passiv šŸ˜‰
  • Invest consistently, and without thinking. Pay yourself first.

They end the blog with a section called How Do I Start Investing?, which has a lot in common with an article I wrote called Ok, Iā€™m ready to fire my advisor. What do I need to do? Let’s take a look at what I agree with and what I disagree with in that part of the article.

Open a Brokerage Account

Passiv seems to think there’s only two brokers out there, namely Wealthsimple and Questrade2. Given that the Passiv platform supports direct connections to these two brokers, this is somewhat understandable. But make no mistake, there’s plenty of other options out there. And what’s right for your neighbour may not be right for you. What broker to use will depend on a bunch of factors, and I talked about some of them here.

Set up Your Accounts

Yup, that’s something you need to do. I broke it down in some detail over here, since I switched brokers earlier this year. Since the target audience is new investors, non-registered accounts don’t get a mention here, but for many long-term investors, a non-registered account ends up being part of the mix. And RRIFs, of course.

Choose Your Investments

Passiv doesn’t have any use for all-in-ones (aka asset allocation ETFs) since that’s kinda core to what they offer. So while their recommendations are sound if you want to buy into the five funds they recommend3, it’s more complicated than it needs to be. For me, it’s a two-step process

Set up Passiv

It’s of course a bit self-serving, but a tool like Passiv is quite useful to track your allocations if you choose not to use an all-in-one. Or you can use a spreadsheet like I do.

Fund Your Account

If you’re transferring from some other financial services provider expect a lot of form filling. I documented some of the issues with transfers in a general sense here and specific to the RRIF holder here.

Buy Your Investments

No argument here; if you don’t actually invest, your money is just sitting idle. If you buy an all-in-one ETF, that’s one trade per account.

Automate and Chill

Yes, Passiv can in fact do trades on your behalf. (That’s an upcharge, though). A Passiv-run portfolio is possible4. All-in-one ETFs are also automated, since part of what they do is periodically rebalance their holdings automatically. In retirement, automation seems difficult. There’s a lot of steps to get paid.

In conclusion

Passiv’s blog is an excellent primer on how to get started; feel free to share it with your kids, colleagues and relatives. Just be aware that it promotes the Passiv approach which, if followed to its logical conclusion, requires a subscription to Passiv Elite — worth it, if that’s the direction you prefer.

  1. Like most online brokers, Questrade is good at some things, not so good at others. You can read my review here. ā†©ļøŽ
  2. They are both fine providers; I have accounts at both. And QTrade too, but that should be done by the end of 2025. Anyway, buying and holding ETFs is offered by all Canadian brokers. No need to limit yourself to just these two. ā†©ļøŽ
  3. Three equity ETFs for the Canadian (VCN), US (VFV), and International markets (VDU) and two bond ETFs covering the Canadian (VAB) and US (AGG) markets. Before I retired, I had a similar approach, but chose different ETFs. In retirement, I chose to simplify. ā†©ļøŽ
  4. Be mindful that trades executed in non-registered accounts generally have tax implications. ā†©ļøŽ